The Home of British Asian Writing
CG Menon’s debut collection Subjunctive Moods, is published by Dahlia Press and the predominant mood of it could be what the last story “Rock pools,” poetically describes as ‘our throbbing darkness and our gleeful knowledge of what we lack.’ The characters in this collection have been analysed with almost mathematical precision, to pinpoint and expose …
Early on in my writing career I attempted to write a police procedural featuring a lead character that was British Asian. Scouring the shelves of bookshops, I thought I had discovered a gap in the market. What hadn’t occurred to me at the time was that the reason I saw no such characters on the …
It is universally acknowledged that it is important for children to see themselves reflected in the books they read. It is also important for children to read about other cultures, backgrounds, and communities. It promotes understanding, tolerance, acceptance and empathy. We all know this. Dr. Melanie Ramdarshan Bold’s study, reported by Alison Flood in the …
The short story has traditionally been an American love affair. Hemingway, Carver and Vonnegut are often cited among the ‘greatest’ of all time. Across the Atlantic, hundreds of new short stories are published each week through independent small presses, the New Yorker publishes one each issue, which is unpicked and put back together again during …
I remember when I first wanted to become a novelist aged eight I was aware of two things: the first was that there were no people like me writing ‘genre’ fiction and the second was that I didn’t care that’s exactly what I wanted to do. I wasn’t aware of just how big a task …
It’s been an interesting few years for British crime fiction. The market for crime novels has been growing steadily, and last year it became the most popular fiction genre in the UK with sales of almost nineteen million books. And yet, as recently as 2015, you’d be hard pressed to find one crime novel written …
Iman Qureshi has won the 2018 Papatango New Writing Prize for her play, The Funeral Director. The Funeral Director was chosen from 1384 entries to the competition, and explores the life of a gay Muslim woman who runs a funeral parlour and is ‘an incisive and heartfelt’ story of sexuality, gender and religion in 21st-century …
Preti Taneja has won the eleventh annual Desmond Elliott Prize, the UK’s most prestigious award for first-time novelists, (20th June). Taneja takes home the £10,000 Prize for her “awe-inspiring” debut novel, We That Are Young, beating fellow shortlisted authors, Gail Honeyman (Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine) and Paula Cocozza (How to Be Human). A retelling of …
I first had the pleasure of reading Priya Sharma’s work when I was a judge for the British Fantasy Awards in 2016, where she won Best short story for her tale “Fabulous Beasts” and I’ve been hooked ever since. So it was with bated breath that I waited for my copy of her debut collection …
Kali Theatre and Curve has launched a new initiative to search for South Asian women writers across 3 UK cities. Its mission is to discover, support and nurture the next generation of aspiring female playwrights – who currently are hugely underrepresented – and bring their rich, diverse voices and experiences to the stage. The programme, …